RAE Increasing in England U19 World Cup Squads

Young Lions (U19) World Cup squad players born between September and February are twice as likely to be selected than those born between March and August.

A preference for selecting players born earlier in the academic/sporting year is a well known and researched concept called Relative Age Effect (RAE). Do we have RAE in cricket? Yes.

Figure 1 below shows that for England U19 World Cup squads from 1998-2020 there is significant (p-value<0.05) Relative Age Effect (Q1-Q4: 57(32.6%) , 49(28%), 39(22.3%), 30(17.1%).

Figure 2 below shows that for the last four World Cups the bias towards Q1/Q2 players is larger. For 2014-2020 there is significant (p-value<0.05) Relative Age Effect (Q1-Q4: 20(34.5%), 20(34.5%), 10(17.3%), 8(13.8%).

So what’s going on here?

Research has shown that RAE exists in UK and Australian player pathways (1,2,3). This research also suggests that RAE decreases from U17 onwards (-> U19 -> Seniors). This analysis suggests otherwise for U19 World Cup squads and that there is a trend to select more and more Q1/Q2 players relative to Q3/Q4.

NOTES

This analysis only looks at World Cup squads and not the entire U19 player pool. Selection for a marquee event will be different as ‘winning’ is more emphasised.

REFERENCES

1. Jones (2019) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317666419_New_evidence_of_relative_age_effects_in_super-elite_sportsmen_a_case_for_the_survival_and_evolution_of_the_fittest
2. Barney (2015) https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/preliminary-stages-in-the-validation-of-a-talent-identification-model-in-cricket(a1e7f8cd-2966-4f33-bcad-a65fede16997).html
3. O’Connor (2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6526896/